Weeks After a Death, Twists in Some 9/11 Details

On Jan. 20, a retired New York City police officer, Cesar A. Borja, 52, lay surrounded by his family at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan. He died three days later.Credit
Allan Tannenbaum/Polaris

For days, a New York City police officer, Cesar A. Borja, who died of lung disease last month, was held up as a symbol of the medical crisis affecting the thousands of emergency personnel and construction workers who labored on the smoking remains of the fallen World Trade Center after the 9/11 attack.

The Daily News published an article describing how Officer Borja had rushed to the trade center site after the twin towers fell, breathing in clouds of toxic dust that seared his lungs, and how he had chosen not to wear protective gear because the federal government had declared the air safe.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote to President Bush seeking more federal money to care for the workers and citing Officer Borja’s months of “16-hour shifts” at the disaster site. The priest at his funeral in Queens pointed out that Officer Borja had worked as a volunteer in the recovery and cleanup efforts.

It was a powerful story, one that brought the officer’s eloquent son to the State of the Union address in Washington on Jan. 23, the day of his father’s death. The son later met with President Bush, and afterward Mr. Bush, in discussing more aid for rescue workers, said he was eager to see money directed to “first responders,” those first on the scene in the days and weeks after the attacks. “If they were on that pile and if they were first responders, they need to get help,” he said.

It turns out, though, that very few of the most dramatic aspects of Officer Borja’s powerful story appear to be fully accurate. Government records and detailed interviews with Officer Borja’s family indicate that he did not rush to the disaster site, and that he did not work a formal shift there until late December 2001, after substantial parts of the site had been cleared and the fire in the remaining pile had been declared out.

Officer Borja worked traffic and security posts on the streets around the site, according to his own memo book, and there is no record of his working 16 hours in a shift. He worked a total of 17 days, according to his records, and did not work as a volunteer there. He signed up for the traffic duty, his wife said, at least in part as a way to increase his overtime earnings as he prepared to retire.

“It’s not true,” Eva R. Borja, the officer’s wife, said of the Daily News account of his rushing there shortly after the collapse of the trade center. In two extensive interviews, Mrs. Borja displayed her husband’s memo book, where he kept detailed notes about his work across his career. The first entry for working at ground zero is Dec. 24, 2001. Almost all the rest come in February, March and April 2002, five or more months after the attacks.

Mrs. Borja said she still believed her husband was sickened in his work around the site. Shown his father’s memo book, Ceasar Borja, who had become something of a spokesman for ailing 9/11 workers, said it was the first time he understood what his father had actually done. “They kept saying my dad’s a first responder,” he said of the newspaper accounts. “I honestly never knew if he was a first responder.” Asked why he had not corrected the seemingly erroneous or unconfirmed public accounts, he said, “The reason I never tried to correct that impression is I never knew the truth of whether my father was there or not. It was always a mystery for me. I never thought of correcting them because I honestly believed it myself.”

It is hard to determine precisely how the apparent misinformation about Mr. Borja’s work at ground zero came to be reflected in newspapers, as well as in television and radio broadcasts. The family says it was not the source of the claims about working on the smoking pile. A spokeswoman for The Daily News insisted the paper had never explicitly said Officer Borja had rushed there soon after Sept. 11, only that at some point he had rushed there. Despite a number of articles and editorials that referred to him working amid the rubble and within a cloud of glass and concrete, she said the paper never actually reported his arriving there before December.

The spokeswoman, Jennifer Mauer, continued to maintain that Officer Borja had worked “200 hours on the pile.”

Other newspaper accounts repeated the account of Officer Borja’s work on the rubble without attributing it to anyone.

Mrs. Borja and her son said that The New York Times was the first newspaper to ask them for documents showing Officer Borja’s actual duties at ground zero.

Doctors and coroners may yet draw a connection between Officer Borja’s death and his more limited duties around ground zero. A city autopsy is under way. Experts say his illness, diagnosed as pulmonary fibrosis, is a rare and little-understood disease, which, depending on a variety of factors — genetics, for instance — can conceivably be caused by modest exposure to certain toxic substances or pollutants.

Then again, doctors may find that Officer Borja, who spent much of his police career at a tow pound in Queens, had other, pre-existing problems. His family says that he smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years before giving it up around the mid-1990s.

Officer Borja’s son said that it was possible his father had gone down to ground zero as a volunteer at some point soon after the disaster, but that his father had never mentioned it, and he had no evidence of it. He said several police officers had approached him at his father’s wake and told him they recalled seeing his father on the pile, but he did not know their names.

The Police Department said informal rosters had been kept at ground zero in the first weeks after the attacks including the names of officers who showed up to work. But the department said it could not easily retrieve the records. The department had no other comment about Officer Borja, who did not officially die in the line of duty and retired with a regular service pension.

Photo

Officer Cesar A. Borja, who died of lung disease last month, became a symbol for ailing ground zero workers, but there is little evidence to confirm accounts of his story.Credit
Polaris

But when Officer Borja, who was seriously ill by 2005, filed paperwork with the city seeking an enhanced pension, he made no mention of any work before December 2001.

An Emotional Fight

Officer Borja’s death came amid an unfolding and emotional fight over the health of ground zero workers and the role of city, state and federal officials in caring for those who might have been sickened by their work in and around the site. A federal lawsuit has been filed on behalf of hundreds of workers, whose lawyers say they are sick and in some cases dying because of their exposure to dangerous pollutants. That suit charges that the city and federal government failed to protect them from exposure. (The Borjas said they had no plans to sue.)

The city’s Law Department, which declined to comment for this article, has said drawing connections between 9/11 work and subsequent health problems has to be judged case by case. Congress set aside $75 million in 2005 for monitoring and treating 9/11 workers, and the White House agreed to add another $25 million last month. In a September study, Mount Sinai Medical Center found that roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers it tested from 2002 to 2004 reported that they had new or substantially worsened respiratory problems while or after working at ground zero.

It was into that charged environment that Officer Borja’s case came to light. Officer Borja, who retired in June 2003, became very sick in 2005, and was admitted to Mount Sinai in December 2006. He was determined to be suffering from pulmonary fibrosis and in need of a lung transplant to save his life, officials have said.

The family, according to Mrs. Borja, reached out to the press. A Manhattan newspaper, The Filipino Reporter, published an article on Jan. 5 saying that Officer Borja had been assigned to security duty immediately after Sept. 11, and that he had done that work for months. It cited 16-hour shifts, and it quoted one family member as saying that Officer Borja had believed the air to be safe.

Officer Borja’s son, according to his mother, e-mailed other newspapers, as well. The Daily News responded. Throughout January, The News and other papers published numerous articles on Officer Borja’s case. The News, which has mounted a campaign of stinging editorials on behalf of those believed to have been sickened at ground zero, eventually paid for Ceasar Borja, 21, to fly to Washington and back for the State of the Union address.

The son said he had been prepared to drive, but accepted the offer. “The Daily News comped me,” Ceasar said. The Daily News spokeswoman said the paper was proud to have paid for the young man’s trip.

The initial accounts are full of dramatic details: The Daily News of Jan. 16 said Officer Borja “volunteered to work months of 16-hour shifts in the rubble, breathing in clouds of toxic dust.” That same article added: “Borja was working at an NYPD auto pound in Queens when the twin towers fell. He rushed to ground zero and started working long days there.”

Some of those claims were repeated in other stories in The Daily News and other papers, in both news articles and editorials. Sometimes the articles said Officer Borja had worked 14-hour shifts. Some identified him as having worked on the pile, and one Daily News editorial said he had “labored in the pulverized concrete, glass and smoke that formed a cloud over the rubble.”

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

The New York Times published one full article on Officer Borja, after he died at 52 on the evening of the State of the Union address. The article said he had become sick after working at ground zero. It said federal officials had agreed to pay for the officer’s medical care as a reflection of their belief that his illness was connected to his work at ground zero.

Politicians quickly began to speak out about the case, and the larger question of 9/11 health issues. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of Manhattan, who has made 9/11 health a focus of her efforts for years, said of Officer Borja: “If his death does not convince the president to come up with a plan to deal with this medical crisis and fund medical monitoring and treatment, I don’t know what else will.”

‘A Hero’ to Clinton

Senator Clinton sent a letter to President Bush. It cited “many months” of Officer Borja’s 16-hour shifts at ground zero, and it stated: “Cesar Borja was a hero who served his country in her hour of need and sacrificed dearly for that service. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, as Cesar’s health deteriorated, he and his family endured a great deal of hardship but never lost sight of the needs of the other workers, volunteers, first responders, and victims who survived the attacks but did not survive unharmed.”

The praise extended to Officer Borja’s funeral on Jan. 27 at St. Josaphat’s Church in Queens. The Rev. Thomas C. Machalski, who celebrated the funeral Mass, said he never discussed the details of the officer’s work at ground zero with his family before speaking, and relied on press accounts when he referred to his having served as a volunteer. In fact, he said he thought the officer was, "already retired when he went back to work at ground zero."

The fifth of 12 children, Cesar Ante Borja was born on June 30, 1954, in Polangui, a city in the Bicol region of the Philippines. The son of a farmer, he came to the United States in 1976. He joined the Army, and Army records show he was an active-duty soldier for four years, and was eventually discharged from the Army Reserve in 1983 with the rank of specialist.

He married Eva in 1982, and he soon joined the Department of Correction. He became a police officer in 1987. He served first in the 109th Precinct in Queens before settling in to many years of work in the property clerk’s office and at the tow pound. There he earned a reputation for diligent work and exemplary attendance. Mrs. Borja said he liked the short commute to the pound from their home in Bayside, Queens, and the idea that he could retire from the city after 20 years with a sizable pension.

“He was the type who wouldn’t complain,” she said of her husband. “Or maybe he didn’t like it, and just didn’t say. He would adjust to whatever situation.”

Photo

Eva R. Borja, the wife of Officer Borja, and their son Ceasar at home Monday. She said her husband did not rush to the towers on 9/11.Credit
Ángel Franco/The New York Times

On 9/11, Officer Borja reported for duty at the tow pound, records show. Over the next several months, there is nothing in his memo book recording any work, assigned or volunteer, at ground zero. Mrs. Borja remembers him mentioning being briefly posted in Brooklyn, near ground zero, shortly after the attacks.

Interviews with several friends, relatives and officers who worked with him at the tow pound failed to turn up anyone who worked with him at ground zero before the end of 2001.

Mrs. Borja said that her husband began to see the appeal of overtime pay for working shifts near ground zero late in 2001. He was close to retiring, and realized he might be able to improve his pension with the overtime hours. She said he even called his nephew, a fellow officer, to encourage him to put in for the overtime shifts, as well. Mrs. Borja said the nephew declined.

And so Officer Borja reported on Dec. 24, 2001. The fires at the site, which had been burning for months, had been declared extinguished on Dec. 19. Considerable progress had been made in cleaning up the site.

Officer Borja’s log book makes clear where he worked during what would be 12-hour, 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. shifts: On Jan. 21, 2002, he worked at Albany and Washington Streets, three blocks south of ground zero. He worked several shifts elsewhere in Manhattan during the World Economic Forum. Then, he was back at Fulton Street and Broadway on Feb. 4, 2002. Ten of his shifts came in March or April.

Three years later, Officer Borja became seriously ill. But in January 2006, when he filed a notice of participation — a document required to enhance his pension under a 2005 state law allowing city workers who labored at ground zero to be declared disabled — he was modest about his duty: he listed eight shifts around ground zero.

On Dec. 19, 2006, he entered Mount Sinai, and soon he was near death. Mount Sinai’s records indicate he listed his first shifts around ground zero as starting in December 2001, although there is a reference to him working 72 days there. There is no additional information about that notation, but the Borja family does not contend he ever worked 72 days at or around the site.

Mrs. Borja, asked to explain how all the differing reports appeared in the press, suggested that things had simply spiraled out of control. “When I would read it, I would say, ‘Why did they put that there?’ ” she said. She said she was too distracted caring for her husband and handling his funeral to correct the record.

An Emerging Role

Ceasar, though, played a very prominent role. He spoke with Mrs. Clinton at an event at ground zero. He went to the State of the Union address. He later met with President Bush in Manhattan. Articles variously quote him talking about how his father died as a public servant and saying that heroes should be looked after.

“That was my first, inaugural speech as a political activist, which I never expected,” he said yesterday. “I was just there expressing my emotions. I didn’t know any facts. I was just speaking from the heart, and everything took off from there.”

At one point during those hectic days, the son put on his father’s pea coat. One newspaper account said the son had suggested it was the uniform his father wore on Sept. 11. Ceasar, in an interview yesterday, denied having said that.

But he did address a gathering of family and friends in Queens after the State of the Union address.

“I made everyone in the U.S. know who Cesar Borja is, what he did for this country, and what he did for the city of New York,” he was quoted as saying in The New York Post. “He is the symbol of the World Trade Center, and 9/11 and New York.”

Aides to Mrs. Clinton issued a short statement when told of the apparent discrepancies. “She knows that sacrifices were made by so many, whether it was in the hours, days, weeks or months after the attacks of Sept. 11, and believes that they all deserve our help.”

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, would not talk about the details of the Borja case. He said the president respected the officer and his son and all who worked at ground zero.

“Ceasar Borja is someone who loved and cared for his father, and his father was a hero from what we know of New York law enforcement and his work at the World Trade Center,” Mr. Fratto said. “It is almost beside the point what the specific details were.”

Officials at Mount Sinai said in a statement: “The fact that Mr. Borja worked there for many days (and nights) provided ample opportunity for exposure to dusts.”

Finally, Ceasar Borja, after having absorbed the implications of his father’s records, said he was no less proud. “I’m actually happy to know he wasn’t on the pile,” he said, adding that those who were must be in even graver shape. He concluded: “I don’t believe my father to be any less heroic than I previously thought, any less valiant than the other papers previously misreported on.”